Hurricane-level winds and torrential downpours ravaged West Marin in a historic storm last Wednesday. The so-called bomb cyclone was exacerbated by back-to-back atmospheric rivers that have rolled in since late December and have caused damage not seen in decades. Each town from Stinson Beach to Dillon Beach felt its own unique blow, and downed trees and power outages affected nearly everyone. Massive storm surge swept beaches in the Point Reyes National Seashore and some of the strongest winds in the Bay Area were recorded in Bolinas and Nicasio.
Yesterday the federal government approved emergency funds for Marin, which joins 30 other California counties that can now receive help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. When county supervisors passed their emergency declaration on Tuesday, they singled out Stinson Beach as the community hardest hit by the storms, with nearly 70 homes suffering water or structural damage.
County roads and maintenance crews worked rotating 12-hour shifts until Tuesday, said Julian Kaelon, the spokesman for the Department of Public Works. Countywide, teams responded to over 800 calls for assistance, removed 79 trees blocking roadways, cleared 13 debris slides and 108 culverts and managed 25 road closures, Mr. Kaelon said.
Though the rains have partially relieved West Marin of problems stemming from drought, struggles persist for farmers and turbid flows leave biologists concerned about salmon spawning success. Universally, the storms laid bare the difficulties of living in forested and seaside communities.
“It’s the price we pay for living in areas like this,” said Graham Groneman, a battalion chief for the Marin County Fire Department. “When we live in forested communities it can be difficult to identify where the next tree is going to fall. Having crews ready is important, of course. Preparedness is prevention.”
Sections of Highway 1, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Nicasio Valley and Lucas Valley Roads were closed in the first 12 hours of last Wednesday’s storm due to rockslides and downed power lines. Sections of Portola Avenue and Balboa Avenue in Inverness Park and Mesa Road in Bolinas remain closed while PG&E repairs damaged infrastructure.
Most outages across Marin began around 4 p.m. last Wednesday, said Fernando Barreto, an aide to Supervisor Dennis Rodoni. Nearly 2,000 customers were affected in Point Reyes Station, Inverness Park and Inverness—double the number in Mill Valley and Novato combined that day. Some customers had no power for as long as 72 hours, and a few dozen customers are still without power.
At 101 miles per hour, level-two hurricane-force winds were recorded at a PG&E weather station in Nicasio last Wednesday evening. In Inverness, the gusts toppled a large bishop pine down the street from Tomales High School teacher Allison Sherman’s home. “The wind was so strong that most of the trees actually fell northward, the direction the wind was blowing,” she said.
Significant power outages spared Stinson Beach, Fire Chief Jesse Peri said, but the town was slammed with a combination of storm surge and high tides that peaked last Thursday morning. “We were receiving reports that waves were breaking in Stinson at roughly 20 to 25 feet,” he said. “Every single [home] on the beach has structural damage, and some even two structures back.”
The fire department ordered mandatory evacuations on Thursday morning for eight blocks in the Calles, though Chief Peri said most of the homes were vacant short-term rentals. The roughly 100 affected houses yielded only a few evacuations. With help from county teams, the department rescued three people from their houses. Ninety first responders and emergency workers from around Marin assisted that day, and the community center hosted over a dozen evacuees at one point.
Around 22 houses in the Calles suffered structural damage, from destroyed foundations to blown septic tanks, Chief Peri said. One house lost its entire deck, and at the beach park, the northern parking lot and bathroom and the lifeguard stand were all damaged by high tides and debris. Nearby streets were covered with sand, garbage from flipped trash cans and debris as floodwaters receded. Public works crews removed over 600 cubic yards of sand and debris in the village.
Six structures in Seadrift suffered structural damage from the surge. With Calle Del Arroyo closed, Seadrift residents and those west of Calle del Occidente were marooned under a shelter-in-place order until 4 p.m. on Thursday.
Further south, rockslides shut down Highway 1 north of Slide Ranch, where trees and heavy winds caused serious damage. Redwood Creek swept over Muir Beach on Wednesday morning, and when the storm subsided, whale bones were spotted along the shore.
In Bolinas, the National Weather Service recorded 101-mile-per-hour winds at Pablo Point, and fallen trees caused mayhem, said Steve Marcotte, the assistant fire chief. Beachfront homes had windows destroyed and fences ripped apart. After the power went out on Wednesday evening, a downed power line on Lauff Ranch Road set fire to Melinda Stone’s workshop, which burned to ashes. The shop held Ms. Stone’s art materials and books saved from the electrical fire that shuttered the Bolinas Book Exchange in 2020. Ananda Brady, who lives on the property, spotted the fire at around 2 a.m. “Had that fire started a few hours earlier when the wind was blowing through, it would have easily spread to her home,” Mr. Brady said.
People on the Big Mesa were briefly stranded on Wednesday when trees fell over both Mesa Road and Terrace Avenue. Bolinas fire staff were downtown during the event and were also stranded for a number of hours. The eucalyptus that fell on Mesa landed on a truck being driven by Bolinas residents Annabelle Scott and Elias Rose. The tree crushed the cab, Ms. Scott suffered whiplash and Mr. Rose had a fractured vertebrae and a concussion. Another resident, Billy Cummings, had a tree fall on the bed of his brand-new Toyota Tacoma.
Further north, Inverness resident Aaron Ely spent last week’s storm with his family at the Point Reyes Hostel. He witnessed the surge breach the Limantour Spit in seven or so spots, washing into the estuary. “You could have boogie boarded from the ocean into the estero if you wanted to,” he said.
Looking at the buoy reports, Mr. Ely, a surfer, knew the swell was unique. Dodging cow patties and fences, he made his way to the shoreline at B Ranch and caught several waves he described as head high. He and others at the ranch were astonished to see Mavericks-sized waves two miles out in Drakes Bay, which rarely has any waves at all.
The storms are an unfriendly portent for spawning salmon. Michael Reichmuth, a fisheries biologist for the Point Reyes National Seashore, said high flows and muddy waters have prevented proper viewing of salmon habitats, but after Wednesday’s storm he surveyed Lagunitas, Redwood and Olema Creeks and said the results were not encouraging.
“I was a little discouraged to not see anything last week, but it doesn’t mean there’s no hope—there were certainly areas we couldn’t get to,” he said. A sonar camera Mr. Reichmuth and his crew had placed in Lagunitas Creek to track salmon activity had to be taken out when flows exceeded two feet on Wednesday. Flows in the creek reached 6,000 cubic feet per second and were over 18 feet high on Jan. 9.
Local reservoirs were filled shortly after the new year as atmospheric rivers provided ample water. The Inverness Public Utility District has recorded 8.1 inches of rain in January, leaving the district just 13 inches shy of its yearly average rainfall. The Bolinas Community Public Utility District recorded almost 7 inches this month, and its reservoirs are full. Marin Water’s reservoirs were filled after last Wednesday’s storm, and the Nicasio Reservoir spilled over the next day. North Marin Water District’s Stafford Lake Reservoir is currently overflowing at 111 percent capacity and yearly rainfall, at 19 inches, is up four inches from historical averages for this date.
And the rains persist. West Marin saw another atmospheric river yesterday, and rains are not predicted to let up until at least Jan. 18. With saturated soils and full reservoirs, it won’t take much more to cause flooding and mudslides, fire officials said. Marin County Fire Chief Jason Weber encouraged people to only travel when necessary.
He said that although these are among the most intense storms he has seen in Marin, the county has fared relatively well. “The storms on Jan. 4 and Jan. 5 produced bigger winds than any other storms I’ve seen in my 27 years here,” he said. “Although we’ve had one major injury from the truck in Bolinas, we feel we’ve been pretty lucky as far as safety goes.”
Supervisor Rodoni said the emergency declaration allows the county to be reimbursed for storm-induced expenditures, from damage to county property to workers clocking in overtime. Damages to private property could only be reimbursed if a federal emergency were declared.